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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Hartmut Behr
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Western modernity is characterised by instrumental relations between humans and humans and nature that have caused irreversible environmental exploitation and degradation. Many policy documents, such as by the UN Environmental Programme, warn of the uncertainty and unpredictability of humankind’s precarious conditions in the 21st century. The book therefore asks, “How to act politically under conditions of uncertainty?” in which no one can predict the consequences of our decisions and policies and our position in the world does not allow us secure knowledge of the direction of politics. Based upon critical diagnoses of Western modernity and its manifold crises as dominated by instrumental understandings of our relations to other fellow humans and to natural environments as well as upon philosophies of uncertainty and contingency, Hartmut Behr suggests the novel ethics of self-restraint and the concept of reversibility. Both demand ethical and practical reflection on the consequences of action through accounting for the conditions and limitations under which we act and live. These normative guidelines provide orientation under conditions of uncertainty and contingency and are introduced as policy framework. The significance of self-restraint and reversibility is demonstrated with regards to current Anthropocene debates. Behr’s book presents a novel understanding of the self and of responsibility centred in the genuine acknowledgement of the human condition as liable to social and ecological interrelations and interdependencies.
Author(s): Behr H
Publication type: Authored Book
Publication status: Published
Year: 2024
Number of Pages: 224
Print publication date: 10/06/2024
Acceptance date: 11/08/2023
Publisher: McGill-Queens University Press
Place Published: Montreal
Library holdings: Search Newcastle University Library for this item
ISBN: 9780228020844
